Pear Dongle Turns Any Dock Into An AirPlay Receiver

This is the Pear, and it might just be one of the most useful iPhone accessories yet devised. It’s a little, puck-like Bluetooth receiver that is designed to slot into any speaker dock and free your iOS device from its needy clutches.

The Pear comes from Brendan P. Kelso, a magnificently-named Kickstarterer. The tiny dongle is powered by the speaker dock itself, which lets it indulge in the whimsy of a glowing pear logo. The Pear appears (ap-pear-s – see what I did there?) as a regular Bluetooth source and is therefore accessible to any app that uses Airplay.

The Pear is squarely in the why-didn’t-anyone-think-of-this-before category, and it’s also in the so-cheap-why-wouldn’t-you-buy-it? camp. At just $40 its cheaper than many other Bluetooth receivers, and requires neither recharging nor a power plug.

I’m totally in. Or I would be, if I had anything that uses a dock – all my speakers already have Bluetooth already these days. Want one? Then get over to Kickstarter and pitch. Sadly, Brendan chose the long, long two-month option for his project, so even though it is already half way funded you’re going to have to wait a while.

Good idea, but my experience with Bluetooth audio docks has been a nightmare. Sure, they’re easy to connect to, but the sound is sub-standard and they’re prone to all sorts of 2.4 GHz interference. Because of the interference in my house (any g-band router will interfere), the useable bluetooth distance shrinks to around 8 feet. Also, I don’t see any mention of it using the higher-quality bluetooth audio Apt-X codec. So, your speaker dock will probably sound like it’s being fed audio through a tin can. Personally, I’d rather spend $69 for a refurb’d Airport Express, hook it into my speaker dock, and get true Airplay. This is the setup that I’m currently running. My dock has an optical input, so I’m feeding it 16 bit/44.1kHz cd-quality audio via my Airport Express.

dordor2012

Would be awesome if there would be such a small pear which has got a normal 3.5mm headphone jack to use any speaker or soundsystem :)

mr_bee

Every time I read about this thing I can’t help but wonder why the black one has the button in the middle and the white one has the button on one side.